Succinct

Last night I heard the most succinct, eloquent summary of the gay marriage issue on one of my favorite shows, The PBS Newshour. The guest, a woman, said that the problem is a result of the fact that the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to take any decisive action, which leaves the states scrambling. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton penned the madness into law with the marriage defense copout. What that legislation mandated is simple: the federal government will not make any decisions on the gender composition of a legal marriage because it doesn’t want to interfere with legislation made at the state level. Furthermore, the states don’t have to agree with one another, or defer to one another; therefore, a marriage that’s legal in New Mexico is not necessarily so in Maine. Instead, we can wage war on a regular basis, state by state. We can pit friends and neighbors and co-workers against one another each and every election season, and we can spend millions and millions and millions of dollars doing so. I was so thrilled to her the guest on last night’s show sum it up so clearly. So thrilled, in fact, that I almost lost sight of the fact that the subject was not gay marriage but the latest immigration fascism from the state of Arizona.